CHAPTER 25 KAYLEE
I’m fuming.
Yes, he finished the job and got me off, but I knew his mind was elsewhere, and that is what pissed me off. I thought what we had was different, but he treated me like I was just another in the line of women he humps and dumps before he moves onto the next one.
He knows one of my biggest fears is not coming first in my own relationships, and today he made me feel like I didn’t matter. I should probably tell him that, but he’s a big boy. He can figure out what he did wrong, and he can figure out how to fix it, too.
I pull out my laptop and get to work on the tasks Ellie sent along for today in the guest room that’s mine. I consider going home, but ultimately I know this is just one hiccup in what has otherwise been a total dream.
He’s not perfect. Our relationship so far has been fairly smooth sailing when it’s just the two of us, and of course there will be differences between us. He isn’t used to being with a woman more than once or twice. I am different, and that’s something he doesn’t know how to navigate.
I’ve been trying to distract myself with work to little avail for over an hour when I hear a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I say. I’m sitting on the bed, leaning up against my pillows propped on the headboard with my laptop perched on my lap.
Ben opens the door and peeks in. “I’m sorry to bother you. Do you want anything for dinner?”
I sigh as I shut the laptop lid and set it on my nightstand. “Come sit,” I say, patting the bed to indicate where he should sit.
As angry as I am, I need to set that aside.
I need to be honest with him, and I need to help him navigate the parts of a relationship that he doesn’t know how to steer in.
I need to be his partner rather than remaining angry and making him guess why.
He isn’t a mind reader, and he isn’t used to making decisions with anyone in mind other than himself. He hasn’t had to.
But I’m in the picture now.
He steps in and sits on the edge of the bed. Gone is the man brimming with confident smirks. He looks beaten down and weary.
“I want you to know that I feel like all the progress we made was shattered by what you did,” I begin.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what? For making me mad?”
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry I used you the way I did. I’ve used sex as a coping mechanism my entire adult life, and it took seeing your reaction for me to realize that. You deserve so much more than how I treated you, and I’m sorry I got caught up in my own shit and took it out on you.”
I’m honestly shocked at his realization. I reach over and take his hand in mine. “I know this is new territory for you. But I just need you to treat me like a partner, okay? I need you to talk to me even when it’s hard.”
He nods and casts his eyes down to the comforter. “I just keep thinking about how that boy would be ten years old and how it doesn’t matter because he was never mine to begin with. Every time I see Tatum, that hurt comes back. I don’t think my mother realizes that.”
“Have you ever thought about telling her what really happened?” I ask softly. I can’t help but wonder what version of the story Tatum told her.
He shakes his head. “What good would it do? It’s a decade old wound now, and my mom’s closer to Tatum than she is to me anyway.”
“What good would it do?” I repeat. “I don’t know. But it might help heal some of the scars you carry.”
He nods and presses his lips together. “Maybe.” He shakes his head.
“I just had so much shit swirling in my head that I needed to take a breather when I was driving. Then you looked up at me with those pretty blue eyes of yours and…I don’t know.
” He glances up and me for a beat before his eyes move back to the comforter.
“I knew you were the only comfort I’d be able to find. ”
When he explains it that way, I’m not sure how to feel.
At first, it felt dirty…but now it feels like maybe I overreacted.
What I saw as aggressive and meaningless, he saw as comforting.
He needed me to fill a void in him even though it made me feel nothing short of used.
But hearing his explanation shifts the equation a little.
I squeeze his hand, finding myself easily forgiving him as he explains what it was all about.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to forgive, but the gesture of talking me through it combined with the knowledge that he’s not used to being in a relationship like this makes me want to help guide him on this path we’re on together.
“Talk to me first next time you’ve got those swirling thoughts, okay?
Get it out of your head and give me some of the weight.
That’s what a relationship is supposed to be.
I carry some of your weight, and you carry some of mine.
We work together to shoulder that weight so that it doesn’t ever get too heavy for either of us on our own. Okay?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. His tone is melancholy, and I get the sense that he’s thinking beyond the end of September when we may have to redistribute that weight so we can each carry our own again.
I don’t want to think about that.
I can’t go there. Not when every single moment, I fall a little harder for this man…scars and mistakes and history and all.